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I broke down a bought an Apple Watch several months ago. I went for the Sport model with the basic Sport band. That kept the cost down to $400. The “Watch” model was another $200 with no change in functionality. The only difference would be in the materials. A steel case and a sapphire crystal.
This was not my first wearable. I had a Fitbit Force, which was recalled. I was happy with the fitness functionality & the iPhone software package. My opinions on the band are well documented.

So far, I’m more pleased with the Apple Watch. It is much more versatile, and has comparable fitness tracking functions.

As a watch, the Apple Watch is actually usable. The software does a good job of displaying when I raise my arm and rotate the watch upward. This is a vast improvement over the Fitbit, where I had to press a button (flashback to the early digital watches). My one nit is that the Apple Watch software is calibrate for wearing it on the outside of the wrist. I wore my watch on the inside of my wrist for decades, and the Apple Watch wasn’t happy with this. This limitation has me back to wearing my watch on the outside of my wrist.

There are ten watch faces loaded, each configurable. I’ve been switching around on an irregular basis. My preference is for traditional analog watch faces. This includes the Mickey Mouse option. The watch faces are configurable for color and options like day, date, timer, stop watch, fitness rings, and battery life.

In all, I’m happy with it. The fitness function is what I use the most (outside of actually using the watch to tell time). I really like the message and phone preview functions. Being able to review/preview messages and calls and deal with most of them quickly is more of a feature that I thought it would be.

Watch OS 2 is due out next week. I’ll post my impressions after I play around with it a bit.

As I have said before, the single USB C port is the weak point of the new Macbook. I’m not overly impressed with the $80 dongle solution from Apple either.

The nice folks at Nonda have slicker solution, at the same price, but only for about another 24 hours. After the Kickstarter campaign is over, it’s going to run about double the price and still, IMHO, worth it. The Apple dongle gives you a USB C port for power only, a USB 3.0 port, and an HDMI port. The Hub+ gives you the following:

The iWatch is still the hot rumor, but I wouldn’t expect that to even be announced until September. That is when Apple will, probably, announce the iPhone 6, and iOS 8.

I’ve seen rumors that Apple will include a range of fitness tracking options in the much debated iWatch. If they do, then they have a chance to pounce on the market hole created by FitBit recalling their Force device. This also puts a lot of pressure of FitBit to come up with a Force replacement (with a functional wrist band) PDQ. If they wait too long, and the iWatch rumors get stronger, they will loose market share to Apple’s vaporware.

On the Amazon front, they have discounted their Kindle devices. Given that they had razor thin margins at best at the retail price, I’m taking the discounting as a sign they want to dump inventory. Flushing the channels of the current inventory in preparation for new model Kindles in the pipeline. I expect them to announce these well in advance of Apple’s big announcement in September. Big retail sale days for consumer electronics include Graduation and Father’s Day (Dad loves his gadgets). If they can make those dates, that would make up for the loss from discounting the current Kindles. They count on the downstream sales on those devices anyway.

For the Android fans out there, take heart. The Google I/O show is slated for June. The rumor mill is expecting the next flavor of Android to come out as well as some new hardware. A new Nexus and some more wearables to go with Google Glass are expected.

The modern geek has lots of gear, and there are still plenty of wires and cables.

Power cables, data cables, audio cables, and the list just goes on.

Wire Ties are great for organizing, but not optimized for things like keeping your ear buds cables from forming the bundle of knots it wants to form. OK, they do a good job, but it is a pain to clip them loose every time you want to use them.

You can get a hundred of these ties for under $8 on Amazon. Free two day shipping if you are a Prime Member.

For smaller bits of cable, like ear buds, Micro USB, or Lighting cables, I cut the ties in half. I find them easier to put on and off at that length.

So go forth and tame the snake pits of cables that exist in your home theater setup, your monitors, and that pocket in your gear bag where you keep the umptyfratz cables you carry around because they could be useful.

I broke down and entered the wearable market. Specifically, I replace my analog watch with a Fitbit Force.
The Force is a wrist mounted wearable that tracks the following:
Steps taken
distance walked/ran
calories burned
Flights of Stairs climbed
Active minutes
Sleep time/activity

It actually does that reasonably well. The Force can display most of that data using a OLED display, unlike the older Fitbit Flex wrist based wearable monitor. I like the immediate feedback right on the device. It reminds me when I’m sitting down too much. Getting up and walking around on a frequent/irregular basis actually helps me with my focus. The Force measures all of this using accelerometers and an air pressure monitor.

The Force will also display the time, but that is one of the two major downsides to the design. To find out the time, Fitbit has recreated that genuine early 1980s experience oh having to press a button on your digital watch in order to find out what time it is.

I’ll get to the other major design flaw later. First I want to cover more of the good points.

The Force syncs with my iPhone over Bluetooth. The Fitbit app then allows me to review the data collected in more detail and over periods of time (day, week, month). I can also log other items, including hydration input.

I can also sync my Force with my Windows 7 desktop, but I have to use the Fitbit custom Bluetooth USB dongle to do so. If I wanted to sync to my Macbook, I have to use the Fitbit custom Bluetooth USB dongle, despite the MacBook having Bluetooth 4.0 built in. Thus sayith Fitbit support, which is a PITA.

On the plus side, the desktop view is a web based app, which gives you everything the mobile app does, but bigger, which is good.

The second major design flaw is the crappy wrist band. I have fairly large wrists, so I’m wearing the Large version of the Force. I’ve found that the “latch” on the wrist band will pop loose when I put on or take off a jacket or long sleeved pullover shirt. The bloody thing will also pop loose if I flex my wrist the wrong way. There are very long threads on the Fitbit forums about this problem. People have lost multiple Force devices (many of which Fitbit has replaced, at $130 retail each), and Fitbits response so far has been to post a video on how to properly insert the slots into the tabs, which is the poor design of the wristband latch. User feedback has been better, including the suggestion of adding an O-Ring over the latch.

Overall I’m happy with the device. The geek portion functions well and gives me data to crunch, which makes me happy. The whole crappy wristband thing is a disappointment, but one you can work around as long as you are aware of it.

Serious though. Wristband design is a pretty mature technology. Somebody at Fitbit who valued form way over function green lighted this Charlie Fox of a design. A decision that has cost them a lot of customer good will. The question is what will Fitbit due in order to get that customer good will back?

Update: Fitbit has stopped selling the Force and issued a recall. The reason given was the skin rash some users were getting from it. The crappy wristband design probably didn’t help. Since Fitbit has dropped this product and will not longer provide firmare updates or other support, I put it to return mine for the full retail value. Fitbit claims to be working on new tracker. I posted the following to the Fitbit user forums:

With all the complaints about the Force wristband, there was an underlying theme of the issue being so frustrating because the Force was the best fitness tracker on the market. The users loved it, except for the bloody thing wanting to jump off the user’s wrist every time they took a jacket off.

I’m sure the Force replacement will be an even better fitness tracker, and have the ability to show messages and phone notification from your phone that the Force will now never have.

However, if it uses the same consumer hostile wristband, I certainly won’t be buying one. That move would certainly alienate the Force customers who love their Force but hate with deep passion the low quality wristband that is integral to the device.

The AR-15 was a good choice. It is one of the most popular civilian firearms in the US, and as Gun Geeks will tell you, it’s the general purpose PC of firearms. It is very modular, with the ability to change stocks and uppers easily. It also has a large market of add on accessories, including pink plastic parts for the female (or male who just likes pink) shooters.

The inter-changeable upper (which includes the barrel) is key. You can convert your .223 AR-15 to 5.55mm NATO, .308 Winchester, .22 LR or even .50 Beowulf. All the same firearm by current US regulations.

On the lower end of the 3D printing scale, is the EDoodler. A hand held devices that extrudes a steam of heated material that you can create whole pieces or parts of a larger object. This is another Kickstarter project which blew past its original goal of $30,000 pretty fast. They have pledges of over $2 million and still have three weeks to go for fundraising.

Going even lower end, you have InstaMorph. I know people who swear by this stuff for really Q&D projects. You heat the stuff up and then are able to mold it. When it cools, it hardens. Kinda like a gateway drug for 3D printing.